Taheri, Amir

2 articles of this author have been cited in the European Press Review so far.

The Times - United Kingdom | 26/08/2010

Iran resembles the Soviet Union

With Chinese technology the Iranian regime has managed to control satellite television within its borders. Now only programmes broadcast by the state can be received. With its control of the media, its megalomania and its ailing economy Iran resembles the Soviet Union shortly before its downfall, writes the conservative daily The Times: "Behind the scenes, President Ahmadinejad's rivals are sharpening their knives. ...The Tehran Chamber of Commerce and Industry warns that almost a million jobs could be lost because the Government is unable to pay its debts to private contractors. The Ministry of Labour has coolly announced that the economy is losing an average of 3,000 jobs a day. With double-digit inflation perverting economic activity, state-owned banks cannot attract investors even with annual interest rates of 20 per cent labelled as 'Islamic mutual benefit'. In its last phases the Soviet Union, having earned the sobriquet of 'Burkina Faso with missiles', was little more than an oil-exporting country with superpower pretensions."

Clash of religions?

For Iranian journalist Amir Taheri, "the attempt by neo-Islam to destroy individual freedoms is as great a threat to Islam as the Inquisition was to Christianity. By emphasizing martyrdom as the supreme goal for Muslims and trumpeting 'the clash of civilisations', neo-Islam also poses a threat to world peace and international law. In order to protect itself, Islam needs to revive its theology with the stress on divinity. In other words, Islam has to become a religion again. That does not mean Muslims have to keep out of politics or not feel concerned by Palestine, Iraq and Kashmir or any other political cause that might interest them. It means that they have to recognise that these causes, like other similar ones, are political, and not religious."